I'm looking to buy a '03-'05 WRX and am wondering why so many have engine rebuilds with relatively low miles on them. Is this common? Can it not take the abuse of sporty driving? Three examples in my area below - I'd appreciate any opinions on them.

#1 and #2 would be poor purchases. The last car does not mention all that's done to it so we can't say. Though, the forged pistons would push me away from it unless this is just gonna be a weekend toy.

While these cars are tough they are not indestructible. Most of those low mile rebuilds comes from idiots not taking care of their cars and therefore they can only take some much. I know what blew my engine and it was operator error, but even with a hole in the piston I drove it home over an hour away...Try that in a Chevy...

My stock engine lasted 5 1/2 years and 97k miles before it needed a rebuild. I took extremely good care of the car maintenance wise, using OEM parts and synthetic fluids and taking care of every maintenance item within a hundred miles or so of the factory recommended interval. When it came to driving, I always let it warm up before I romped on it and I always let it cool down before shutting it off. Even though it's my daily driver, I drove it spiritedly fairly often.

The car was Stage 2 (using Cobb's off the shelf map) from 11k to 86k. I added a few bolt-ons and got a professional tune at 86k, and upgraded the turbo and got another tune at 93k. I blame the aftermarket 20G turbo since the engine catastrophically failed about 4k miles after the install.

I'm convinced that if I had left the car at a Stage 2 power level and kept up with maintenance, the stock engine would have lasted well over 100k, but the mod bug bit me hard